President's Perspective

The case for common standards

May 7, 2009 7:12 PM

On May 1, I testified before the House Education and Labor Committee on the need for rigorous, national academic standards. Here is the main part of that testimony.

Chairman Miller, Ranking Member McKeon and members of the committee, I appreciate the opportunity to testify on the need for common state academic standards.

I first want to thank President Obama and the Congress for enacting a stimulus bill that is preventing cuts in vital education programs in the midst of our current financial crisis. But we must do more to meet the president’s goal of ensuring that all students receive a rich, rigorous education that prepares them for college or the workforce after high school.

We must invest our intellectual capital in developing and implementing policies and programs that make our education system work for our students and teachers. For too long we’ve taken a triage approach to public education. This is not a solution and is no longer sustainable.

Education, when done correctly, follows a continuum, each piece building upon and responding to the next. Unfortunately, in the quest for the magic reform, we have let our “system” of education ignore the interrelationship of these pieces. Important components — such as standards and assessments; teacher recruitment and retention; professional development; curricula; improved working and learning conditions; and accountability — can no longer be treated separately.

Nor can we think about early childhood education or wraparound services — programs that help level the playing field for poor kids — as extras. If we’re not addressing all of these issues, we’re just tinkering around the edges of true education reform.

We should start first with the development of rigorous, common state standards.

We live in a highly mobile, instantly connected world in which knowledge travels on highways we can’t even see. Our students must be able to navigate through that world, and their ability to do so will be limited if we don’t change our current patchwork of varying state standards.

The AFT has been at the forefront of the standards-based education movement, which grew out of two imperatives: the need to ensure that our students are prepared to compete in a global economy and the need to address the intolerable achievement gap.

Since 1995, the AFT has judged state standards on their clarity and specificity. We have found too little evidence of progress in developing standards that improve teaching and learning. In fact, a 2006 AFT survey found that just 11 states had all of their reading and math tests clearly aligned to strong standards.

In addition, a report issued earlier this year by the Fordham Institute detailed the variability of NCLB’s system of accountability, while also reinforcing the argument for common state standards. The report found that “schools that make AYP in one state fail to make AYP in another,” and that many schools would “fare better if they were just allowed to move across state lines.”

Imagine the outrage if, during the Super Bowl, one football team had to move the ball the full 10 yards for a first down while the other team only had to go seven. Imagine if this scenario were sanctioned by the NFL. Such a system would be unfair and preposterous.

While developing strong core standards, we also need to ask: What else do schools and teachers need? How about a content-rich, sequenced curriculum, aligned assessments and instructional supports such as professional development, standards-based guides and model lesson plans for teachers. How about a survey that asks teachers what conditions they need to help children reach these standards? How about then ensuring that any accountability measures track whether teachers actually were provided what they needed?

Our teachers know that the typical state’s standards are not nearly comprehensive enough to serve as the foundation for a well-aligned, coherent education system. They know better than anyone that knowledge builds on knowledge. Standards must offer carefully sequenced content from the beginning of schooling through the end of high school. But most state standards don’t. As a result, we are left with negative results, such as:

• Students, especially those who change schools frequently, end up with gaps and repetitions in their schooling.
• Too many districts don’t even try to flesh out the state standards, much less their own curricula and lesson sequencing, which leaves teachers to face these challenges on their own.

These problems could be addressed if we had clear, specific, content-rich, grade-by-grade standards.

Developing a new system of standards is a daunting task, but it must be done. To get there, we must create partnerships to take the best academic standards and make them available as a national model. Teachers then would need the professional development, and the teaching and learning conditions, to make the standards more than mere words. To that end, the AFT is glad that Secretary Duncan is proposing to use the “Race to the Top” funds to help develop these standards. It would be the best possible use of that funding.

Countries that consistently outperform the United States on international assessments have education systems that include some common features: national standards, with core curricula, assessments and time for professional development for teachers based on those standards. Can we afford to do any less here?

Getting the standards right will not be enough. We also have to fix the fundamentally flawed accountability system in NCLB. We need a system of accountability that is built around standards, recognizes that success means much more than producing high scores on two tests a year, seeks to fix — not blame — schools, and gives credit for progress. It must also hold everyone responsible for developing a system offering the well-rounded education we all want for our children.

Frankly, inadequate tests and a flawed accountability system have gotten dangerously out in front of the other elements of standards-based reform, threatening the very educational quality we’re trying to build. If we are not testing the right information, or the accountability system is flawed, or the tests are inadequate, or teachers are not supported, we will not reap the rewards a standards-based reform system offers. As we look ahead to NCLB reauthorization, we need to address these issues.

I’m not so naive as to think it will be easy to reach consensus on common state standards. But few things worth achieving are ever easy. The time has come for a serious consideration of common state academic standards, and for the development of a richer and fairer accountability system to measure our progress in reaching them.

The AFT is ready to assist in any way we can to help move in this direction.